


Constrictor

by thundercrackfic



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bookshop Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Depressed Aziraphale (Good Omens), Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fanart, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Soft Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 08:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21491464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundercrackfic/pseuds/thundercrackfic
Summary: If Heaven doesn't want or need him, if he's not part of a Plan, what is Aziraphale good for?Featuring snek Crowley.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 345
Collections: Hurt Aziraphale





	Constrictor

**Author's Note:**

> This idea took me over and wouldn't let me work on any of my other WIPs until I got it all out of me. I'm really sorry for what Aziraphale goes through in this one, I never wanted to hurt you, angel.

“Crowley! You’re driving me mad with your incessant pacing. Please, I beg you, find somewhere else to stalk.”

It shocked the demon so much that he didn’t say a word, just turned on his heel and left, walked until he reached St. James’ park, realized where he was, scowled enough to wilt a nearby shrubbery, then conjured the Bentley. Crowley drove home, muttering, “I’ll show you somewhere else to stalk,” which made zero sense if you looked at it, but Crowley wasn’t looking.

The thing was, things ought to be happy now. He and Aziraphale had prevented Armageddon, and Heaven and Hell were, at least for the moment, leaving them alone. They should be able to relax, to fall in to their normal pattern, meeting for tea or a creative new restaurant or extraordinary amounts of alcohol, all the while fraternizing to their hearts’ content.

It wasn’t working out that way. Something was off with Aziraphale, but Crowley was ill-equipped to discover what it was. Instead, he stayed away for a few days, hoping the angel’s mood would recover on its own.

* * *

Aziraphale was relieved when Crowley left. He was in more than a bit of a funk, and it was hard to keep himself from saying things to Crowley that he instantly regretted. It was easier to be alone. He considered the pile of new vintage books on his desk, but didn’t feel like reading them.

There was a noise somewhere in the shop. Aziraphale ducked to a dark corner, his back to a wall, anticipating Sandalphon or Gabriel or Michael coming for him. After a few moments, he realized all was quiet. Nothing was happening. It could just have been a book falling over on a shelf. And anyway, he hadn’t sensed any nearby miracles.

Crowley had told him several times that Heaven was more likely to just pretend he didn’t exist than to expend any more energy trying to kill him, but Aziraphale found that to be neither reassuring nor consoling. He’d never had trouble filling his time, but it had been more fun when the time-filling was packed around purpose.

The fact was, nobody needed him. They’d even tried to do away with him. He felt useless and purposeless. The idea of eternity after the end of Earth had been horrifying, but he wasn’t sure, anymore, why he was still on Earth at all.

Well, that was a depressing thought. Maybe he just needed some tea and some Evelyn Waugh.

* * *

Aziraphale wasn’t as snappish the next time Crowley visited, but the demon soon whished for a return of the angel’s former irritability. He’d brought a rich chocolate torte and a 50-year-old port wine as an opening bid on an entertaining afternoon. But Aziraphale greeted him with a listless “oh, thank you, dear boy,” and then only nibbled at the torte, taking the barest sips of port.

Crowley furiously downed his glass, and demanded “what’s wrong, angel? Does it taste so bad? I’ll curse the pastry chef.”

“Oh, no, it’s good, I’m just not really in the mood,” Aziraphale said. He seemed to realize that this was an insufficient explanation. “I’m just feeling a little wrung out, is all. I’m sorry I’m not very good company.”

Crowley frowned so hard that the wallpaper peeled, but it had no effect on Aziraphale, who continued to pick at the dessert, eating decreasingly sized bites until he was no more than licking chocolate flavor off his fork, leaving the port untouched.

Crowley left in such a foul mood that he didn’t think of returning for a week.

* * *

The quiet was better than Crowley’s noise. Aziraphale cleaned up and figured he would read. He should read. He loved reading, didn’t he? But all the books looked so heavy.

Surely he just needed to open one and he’d be able to escape. He picked a book at random and sat down on the sofa. He ought to put his reading glasses on. It seemed like too much effort, though. He really wasn’t interested. So he just sat, staring at nothing.

He didn’t notice when the book slid from his knee and fell to the floor, its spine breaking and its pages bent.

* * *

Crowley enjoyed his petty demonic work, exerting tiny efforts here and there to make humans struggle in tiny ways that added up to widespread frustration, but he felt hollow without his habitual bickering with Aziraphale. So after a week, he swallowed his pride, miracled two excellent seats to a new play, and returned to the bookstore.

Crowley knew something was off as soon as he entered. There was always a slightly dusty smell about the bookshop, the odor of yellowing paper and aging leather bindings, but the scent was a little more pungent than normal. Also, it was too quiet. “Angel?” he called.

There was no answer. Worried, Crowley walked a little faster, reaching the back room, and finding Aziraphale sitting on the couch. That _off_ feeling intensified. “Aziraphale, are you all right?” he asked.

There was a beat. Too long a pause. Aziraphale made one attempt to speak, failed, cleared his throat, and said faintly: “Yes, I’m quite all right.” He didn’t meet Crowley’s eyes.

It struck Crowley that while evidence suggested Aziraphale hadn’t stirred for some time, no book was to hand. In fact, there was a book lying upside down on the floor, wide open, its pages folded where it had fallen, who knows how long ago. Seeing a book so mistreated, within Aziraphale’s reach, struck terror into Crowley’s heart.

Crowley knelt down to retrieve the book, and carefully smoothed the abused pages straight before folding it shut. “Angel, what’s going on?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale responded. He picked at his trouser knee desultorily. “I guess I’m wallowing a little. I’m being silly. It’s nothing really. Don’t worry yourself.”

Crowley removed his glasses and stared at Aziraphale with all the power of his skeptical snake expression.

Aziraphale’s eyes flickered up, and then down again. “I suppose I’m a _little_ down in the dumps.”

Crowley deployed his left eyebrow, lifting it an inch above his eye.

“It’s just –” Aziraphale looked down, rubbing his knee with his hand. “I always thought I part of something bigger. I knew I wasn’t _very_ competent, but I thought I was, you know, part of a team. Part of the Plan.” He paused. When he looked up at Crowley again, his eyes were watery. “I guess I’m not sure why I’m here, now that they’ve made it very clear that I’m not needed, or even wanted. I don’t know what I’m _for_, anymore.”

Crowley grimaced and paced, imagining blasting several archangels in hellfire. “Why not do what we’ve always done? Everywhere you look there are temptations and blessings to offer, and food, drink, and art to consume. What does it matter why we do it?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it matters to me.”

Crowley did try to tempt him into going to the play. “No, I don’t think I will,” Aziraphale said, looking down at his lap.

A little while later, Crowley left.

* * *

It got so Crowley couldn’t bear the bookshop anymore. There was an air of decay and sadness about it. He had had enough of that in Hell, he didn’t need it on Earth as well. He tried everything he could think of to rouse Aziraphale, but he had little skill at instilling cheer. That had always been the angel’s department. The absence of joy, even of a tiny little curl of happiness, gave Crowley nothing to work with.

Crowley pleaded with Aziraphale, asking him to leave the shop. Aziraphale sat stolidly on his couch and refused, or ignored him. Crowley attempted bribery, with tickets to plays or promises of naughty artworks or sinful desserts. Aziraphale declined. Crowley argued with him, telling him he was being ridiculous, surely he needed to get up off the sofa and leave the bookstore and eat and breathe and experience all the world had to offer. Aziraphale just quietly refused to meet his eyes, sinking further.

At his wits’ end, Crowley finally snapped. “Fine! If it’s what you want! I’ll go away without you! I’ll go dining around the world and you won’t get any of it! You can just stay in your moldy bookshop, see if I care!”

It wasn’t the most dignified speech. Aziraphale just sat in his infuriating stillness on the sofa. Crowley stormed out.

It had been suffocating in there. Crowley needed to breathe, even though he actually did not need to breathe. He made good on his threat. He went to Goa, where he enjoyed the food a great deal (he never ate much, but he did taste, and he appreciated a fiery curry as much as the next demon), and then he fomented a little rebellion in Trincomalee, and encouraged a little marital discord in Singapore, and spent several days being extraordinarily drunk in Nagasaki, visiting memorials and thinking about how humans were so creative that they could out-evil Hell.

Eventually, though, worry overcame him. He had little hope that it was in his power to help Aziraphale, but he couldn’t rid himself of his persistent, irritating worry, no matter how much whisky he consumed. When his fretting overcame every attempt at indulgence, he decided to check in on Aziraphale.

Crowley returned by way of the UAE, where he finagled an extremely embarrassing indiscretion for a prince. The prince would have made a terrible king; Crowley figured he was doing both Upstairs and Downstairs a service by engineering the prince’s shameful fall from power.

* * *

The bookshop hadn’t changed in the nearly three weeks that Crowley had been absent. No—that wasn’t quite true. Crowley noticed that a fine coating of dust now covered the tabletops and books.

“Angel?” he called. No answer.

A little fearful, Crowley stepped quietly toward the back room. It was just around the corner. “Angel?” he called again. No answer.

Crowley took two steps and found Aziraphale precisely where he’d sat three weeks before. At one end of the sofa. No book to hand. He seemed to have sunk into the couch. He looked gray. It was a fine coat of dust. A chill spiraled down Crowley’s spine when he realized that the angel’s clothes, unchanged for 150 years, hung loose on his frame.

“Aziraphale. When was the last time you ate?”

A minute movement of the head. He licked his lips. Crowley noticed they were cracked. “Oh, I don’t know,” Aziraphale said quietly. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right, it’s nowhere near all right,” Crowley spat. “Snap out of it, angel. You’re doing no one good just sitting there. I’ll get you something to eat.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes. “Don’t,” he whispered.

“I don’t recall giving you a choice,” Crowley said, angrily.

“Don’t,” Aziraphale said, with slightly more force. “Leave me alone. Go enjoy the world.”

Crowley left again, because what could he do?

* * *

The less said about the next few weeks, the better. Crowley tried everything he could think of to rouse Aziraphale, but the angel just sank deeper into the sofa, wasting away. Crowley alternated between anger, helplessness, and despair. He began to feel that Aziraphale had gone mad and was dragging Crowley with him.

Despondent and frantic, Crowley finally stated: “Talk to me, angel, or—or—I’ll never talk to you again!”

The gray figure didn’t move. Crowley bit back a sound that definitely was not a sob, because demons didn’t do that. He turned on his heel and shuffled toward the door when he heard a noise, a soft scraping.

“What?” he asked, turning.

“Don’t go,” came the faintest of whispers. “Please.”

Crowley wanted to set everything on fire. But he had no power to refuse this request. Reluctantly, he slithered toward the sofa and sat. Dust billowed around him.

Crowley had tried everything he could think of. Nothing had worked. All he had left to offer was to keep company. He sat.

Presently, he slept.

* * *

When Crowley woke again, two more weeks had passed. It was very cold in the bookshop, and dim. Crowley exerted himself, mentally checking the positions of the Sun, Moon, and stars, and found that it was now December, just a day before solstice. He glanced over at Aziraphale and saw the angel as still as before, more sunken. The sweater, waistcoat, and shirt now hung on him, the collar and bowtie loose around his wrinkled neck.

An angel’s body should not be able to waste away, but somehow, Aziraphale’s was.

The angel had been still for the weeks before, but something was different now. Crowley reached out with his supernatural senses and found that Aziraphale wasn’t just chilled on the Earthly plane, his fire was muted on the ethereal plane, too. He was fading.

A painful memory bubbled to the top of his consciousness. He realized he’d seen this before. After the Fall, nearly half of the erstwhile angels had been unable to muster the will to live as demons. Not only had their bodies broken in the Fall; in the absence of God’s grace, their hearts were broken, too. They’d faded into oblivion, leaving Hell filled only with those souls too insane, too angry, or, like Crowley, too ornery to give up.

But Crowley hadn’t seen this happen in an angelic soul inside a human corporation before. It may never have happened before that an angel had been so cut off from Heaven without Falling.

With rising fear, he permitted his eyes to go full snake and studied the withered body before him. He detected only rare beats of the angel’s heart. There was no evidence that he breathed. There was little circulation in his limbs, which were cold, much colder than was safe for a human corporation. Even his head was chilled, to a point that would have killed a human; Aziraphale’s physical and metaphorical warmth had both retreated.

Aziraphale shouldn’t need to breathe, eat, or sleep. But his angelic soul was not fully animating his human body anymore, and it seemed the body was declining too. _Fucking Hell, angel, can’t you even maintain your corporation_? Crowley wanted to yell. Even he knew that the flash of anger he felt was an ineffectual disguise for his panic.

Crowley wasn’t sure Aziraphale had much more time to neglect his corporation in this way. He thought of trying to exchange corporations as they’d done before, but worried that Aziraphale needed to be conscious to make it work, and that Crowley ran the risk of dislodging the angel entirely from his manifestation on Earth if he tried it.

“WAKE. UP!” Crowley shouted, desperately. “FUCKING OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AT ME!”

Aziraphale didn’t move.

What could he do, what could he do? Crowley had to bring life back to the listless body, or else there’d be nothing left for Aziraphale to inhabit. He eyed the looseness of Aziraphale’s clothing, and was inspired with a desperate plan for how to make Aziraphale’s lungs and heart work again – finally, an action that he could take that didn’t depend on the angel’s compliance.

Crowley climbed onto the couch. He reached over and gently untucked the angel’s shirt from his trousers – easy to do, now, they were so loose. Dust puffed softly from the folds of fabric. He untied the bowtie and opened the top two buttons of the shirt. Then Crowley shifted into his snake form, twenty feet long, his head the length of Aziraphale’s palm.

Slithering forward on the couch, he lifted his head over Aziraphale’s lax thigh, then poked inside the shirt. He steeled himself for the frisson of contact with the adversary, the spark of incompatible magics that usually greeted any touch between the two of them. But when his snout touched the angel’s cool skin, the spark was absent.

Crowley nosed between Aziraphale’s back and the couch, shifting the frighteningly lightweight body slightly. Aziraphale began to tip forward, but Crowley held him in place with a stiff coil. Methodically, he wound himself around the angel’s body, making one loop, then a second, spirling atop himself. He coiled upward, fitting his loops around the angel’s ribcage, and slithered forward until his head emerged from the back of the shirt collar. He rested his head against the jugular vein, and stilled.

It was, at least, warmer here than it had been in the chill air of the bookshop, inside Aziraphale’s layers of clothing. As a snake, Crowley’s hearing was very poor, but with his jaw against Aziraphale’s neck he could feel every rhythm of Aziraphale’s body. There wasn’t much to feel. He had to wait several seconds to feel the faint double beat of one heart contraction, _lubb…dupp._

He’d never been so physically close to the angel before, but Aziraphale was metaphysically so far away.

First things first. Crowley constricted the coils wound around Aziraphale’s chest, squeezing the dormant ribcage. With his cheek pressed against the angel’s jaw, he could sense the air being expelled. He tasted the air with a flickering of his tongue; it was heavy, stale.

Crowley relaxed his constriction. The natural spring of Aziraphale’s ribs expanded them, forcing an involuntary, slow inhalation. _Okay. That worked_, Crowley thought. He waited for another of those sluggish heartbeats, and then repeated the motion. Squeeze, slowly but firmly, hold, and relax. Another breath out, another breath in.

After a dozen or so cycles, the air expelled from Aziraphale’s lungs tasted sweeter. Crowley stopped for a few minutes, hoping that maybe he’d managed to remind Aziraphale’s body to breathe, but the angel stilled again, torpid.

Crowley could think of nothing else to do. He couldn’t call Aziraphale back. He couldn’t pray for him, or beg anyone more powerful for help. As far as Crowley knew, they each had only each other in all of Creation to care for each other.

Crowley would be damned, again, if he was going to lose that.

He settled his coils, waited for a heartbeat, and then began the cycle of breathing for Aziraphale again. If this was all he could do, he would do it until Aziraphale recovered, or expired.

The repetitive muscular activity of constricting and relaxing generated heat, and soon he had made a cozy, warm cocoon inside Aziraphale’s clothes. After a while, the work became automatic.

Surrounded as he was by the odors of Aziraphale’s skin and well-worn clothes, his mind began to wander into reminiscence. His memories were colored golden by his proximity to the angel. With each relaxation after each constriction, his mind jumped to another moment, another impression: Aziraphale’s fastidiously arranged clothing, his little expressions of joy at delicious foods or unexpected gifts, even his pretty exasperation at Crowley’s teases and temptations.

So Crowley breathed for Aziraphale throughout the night, and the next day. It was solstice that evening – the shortest day of the year, and the longest night. Perhaps the longest solstice night Crowley had ever experienced.

By the wee hours of the morning, Crowley was as exhausted as he’d been after the world hadn’t ended. His reminiscing had faded into one repetitive thought. Constricting, tensing all his coils: _Azira!…_ A shout, a call. Relaxing, feeling the angel inhale: _…phale._ A request, a prayer.

_Azira…phale…_

_Azira…phale…_

_Azira…phale…_

* * *

The sun had risen and was casting a beam across the couch when Crowley snapped out of his stupor, realizing that Aziraphale had taken a few breaths on his own. Through his coils he felt the body under him stir. He felt, rather than heard, the angel whisper: “That will do.” Crowley felt ready to discorporate with relief.

He shifted, ready to slither out of this somewhat compromising position, but the body inside his coils twitched. It felt like magic to Crowley when the chest expanded on its own again, then contracted slowly, Aziraphale breathing out: “Don’t go.”

Crowley relaxed, let his head droop onto the base of Aziraphale’s throat, felt the slow but reassuring rhythm of heartbeat and breathing under him, and succumbed to his exhaustion, falling asleep.

Aziraphale shifted arms that had not moved for weeks, and gently hugged the serpent coils wrapped around him.

He drifted, but he was no longer drifting away.

* * *

Crowley woke after a few hours of restorative rest and felt the angel’s arms atop his coils – weak, but there. He was going to have to maintain physical contact, it seemed, but he wanted to talk to Aziraphale. He slithered forward, nosing between Aziraphale and the couch again, this time winding himself on the outside of the angel’s clothes. He transformed, ending up behind the angel, pressed against his back, arms and legs wrapped around him. “Aziraphale?” he asked tentatively.

He heard the angel lick his lips. “I’m here,” he whispered.

“You were so far away,” Crowley said, burying his face against Aziraphale. There was the barest hint of a sizzle at the contact between his nose and the angel’s neck. Crowley was weeping, but was too spent to be ashamed about that.

“You called me back,” Aziraphale said. “I heard you.”

There was no denying that. Crowley was glad Aziraphale couldn’t see his eyes at the moment. He closed them, and reached out with his other senses. Aziraphale’s fire was still dim, but stronger than it had been. Crowley tensed involuntarily at the thought of the angel fading away, his arms and legs recalling the firmness of serpent coils, and he sensed an answering flicker in Aziraphale’s warming fire.

Neither of them was inclined to move, so they didn’t.

* * *

Aziraphale felt that his mind was full of cobwebs. He’d lost some time, he knew, but was shocked when Crowley told him how long. The demon’s tight embrace didn’t let up; Aziraphale felt both strength and desperation in it. “Have you been—this whole time?” Aziraphale asked. His mouth felt like sawdust.

“Not like this,” Crowley managed. “Snake.”

Aziraphale remembered the feeling of the snake’s head nuzzling his throat, the tickle of a flickering tongue. A squeeze of serpent coils and a calling of his name. Dear Heaven, the demon been so loyal. To him. “Crowley, I’m so sorry. I’ve been wretched to you. I don’t deserve you. I don’t know why you’ve stayed—”

“Hush, angel. Don’t talk like that. Not until you’re strong enough for me to argue with you.”

Aziraphale felt the zing of the demon’s magic; he’d miracled something. Crowley untangled one arm from under Aziraphale’s, reached out, and brought a steaming mug to Aziraphale’s lips. “Might I tempt you with some cocoa?” he asked.

It smelled sweetly of milk, with just enough chocolate for flavor. Aziraphale didn’t feel hungry, but he was thirsty, and the idea of drinking something didn’t offend him as much as it had before.

He reached a hand up, and it shook. Rather than take the mug, he rested it on Crowley’s. He guided the mug in Crowley’s hand to his own mouth, and sipped. He worked his way through half the drink, slowly. That was enough, for now; he pushed Crowley’s hand away.

Crowley set it gently on the end table beside them, then replaced his arm in a tight grip around Aziraphale. He was bound completely in demon limbs, and he felt protected.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said. “I’ve been awful—”

“Angel,” Crowley said, warningly.

He had to say it, had to speak it aloud or he might succumb again. “Listen, I beg you.” Crowley was quiet. Aziraphale took a deep breath, and Crowley answered with a squeeze of his arms and legs. Aziraphale went on, drawing strength from the demon. “It hurt me, when Heaven turned on me. It still hurts. But it was wretched of me not to recognize that I am still loved, because you love me.”

“Ngk,” Crowley said. He burrowed his head down into Aziraphale’s shoulder, as though he could hide from the fact that he encased the angel like a clam.

Aziraphale sighed. “I know you can’t say it. But I know you do.”

“Hnnng,” Crowley said. Aziraphale waited, quietly. After a quiet moment, he added: “I’m not much of a demon.”

“No, you aren’t,” Aziraphale said, and he felt a tiny nudge of happiness, a little spark in the darkness that had consumed him for so long.

* * *

Recovery isn’t linear. As he found his way back to himself – or to a new version of himself – Aziraphale still fell into melancholy from time to time, was still prone to irritability. But Crowley learned to watch for the signs and was ready with tighter hugs than any human could bear. On particularly bad days, he could wrap Aziraphale in serpent coils and squeeze him, pinning him in his corporation, keeping him grounded to Earth.

It was a long winter. Aziraphale still refused to leave the bookshop, but he did start reading again. Crowley learned to manage Aziraphale’s mood, no longer sheepish about bringing gifts that he knew would make the angel feel cared for, tempting him with foods from restaurants and bakeries all over London. Aziraphale’s corporation began to fill out again, though he never quite regained the plump softness he’d had before Armageddon.

Which meant Aziraphale’s clothes didn’t fit properly, and that was a source of melancholy that Crowley could fix. With some effort Crowley managed to tempt and wheedle Aziraphale out of the bookshop to visit one of London’s best tailors. Aziraphale’s eyes shone a little as he fondled the rich fabrics, and Crowley figured that was enough of a reward for one day even if they accomplished nothing else. But Aziraphale stood to be fitted for a new suit, and picked out a style that, while technically about 70 years old, was not all that different from a modern suit. He seemed to be tiring at that point, so Crowley made the fabric decision for him, having learned Aziraphale’s tastes over six millennia. He’d known the instant he spotted a taupe Italian merino wool with an understated pinstripe check of blue-gray and cream that it was precisely correct. (It’s possible that he used a tiny miracle to adjust the shade of the blue stripe more to his liking.)

A week later, just before they ventured out of the shop a second time to pick up the suit, Crowley presented a gift of a pale blue silk bowtie that perfectly matched the fabric and Aziraphale’s eyes. “Oh, my dear, you shouldn’t have,” Aziraphale said, but he was already reaching for the tie, caressing the fabric.

“S’nothing, angel,” Crowley said, carelessly.

Aziraphale disappeared behind a curtain to dress in the suit and then emerged to stand before the three-way mirror. He turned this way and that, admiring the cut, and adjusted the bowtie. He inhaled and exhaled and stood straight. He looked dashing, Crowley thought.

The angel turned from the mirror and met Crowley’s eyes, and there! After so long, there was his angel’s joyful smile, radiant as the Sun coming out after a thunderstorm, slaking Crowley’s thirst for divine grace.

Crowley wiped away a tear.

“I love you, too,” Aziraphale said.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope there was enough comfort at the end for you! I delight in comments. I delight in constructive criticism. For real. What did you like? What would you have done differently? Find me in most places at [thundercrackfic](https://twitter.com/thundercrackfic).


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